NICOLA YOUNG

My last blog post was all about gathering inspiration. Today is about preparation so all the ‘ations’!

Alnmouth Arts Festival

In June I am taking part in a 2 day Arts Festival.  It takes place in Alnmouth, a rather gorgeous small village on the coast of Northumberland.  Over the past few years, the village has started to build a reputation for supporting the arts and the annual festival is their main event.  You may remember in my last post I talked about visiting The Old School House gallery – one of my favourite galleries.  This is in Alnmouth and I’m sure the main reason for the little explosion of arts and culture.

If you’d like to see the other artists displaying at the festival you can check them out here.

The village has a rich history dating back to the twelfth century and is a must stop if you are visiting the area.  If there are any crime fiction fans out there – apparently Val McDermid (the queen of crime) lived in the village for a period of time.

Sadly I have never been to the festival, despite visiting Alnmouth on numerous occasions.  The dates always seem to clash with holidays or trips away so I’m both excited and rather nervous about showing there this year.

Preparation

I noticed that I was running low on business cards. A ‘must have’ stable for any arts event. So, I have also treated myself to some new ones.  Recently I have spotted quite a few artists who had displays of different images on cards.  A bit of googling and I ordered a fresh batch from Moo who let you place an order for a batch of cards where you can switch the front image.

This way people can select a card with a painting that they love.

So to make sure that I don’t have a mad panic at the start of June I thought I’d get ahead with my preparation.

It always surprises me how much work is involved even after you think you have completed a painting. Applying gloss medium isolation coats, cold wax finishing and for me, painting the reverse of wooden boards to tidy them up. All of this means moving them out of the studio to avoid any paint splatter. So my art is slowly creeping into other rooms in the house.

After this, it’s off to the framers and then finally signing the reverse, adding details of the titles, mediums, and a reference number.  And over the next couple of weeks, I will also need to do some admin stuff like updating my inventory and adding new works to my website.

Exploratory Sketches

I toyed with the idea of creating some prints for the festival as I know that for many people art is a big investment so having some lower cost pieces helps appeal to a broader audience. 

Instead, I’ve decided to sell some of my smaller exploratory sketches on paper so have been popping these into mounts to take along to the festival.  I haven’t tried this before so will be interesting to see how these go down.

I have even included some recent still life pieces.  These are exploratory sketches in acrylic on paper.  I started these as I wanted to take a little break from the series I have been working on and I find still life less taxing than abstracts.

So, What’s Left to Do?

Well, preparation has stalled over the past couple of weeks so I need to get onto this.  Sorting out table cloths, wrapping and packing paintings and then updating my website with new work.  Something I have sadly neglected recently.

Hope you managed to get a bit of sunshine this month.  Fingers crossed June brings so hotter weather!